Planning your Post-Doc

hi this is JD atiyah assistant professor of sustainable architecture and building technology and I'm going to talk with you today about planning your postdoc well the audience of my presentation today is early career researchers who are in a transition period between a PhD and a fixed contract job so the postdoc in this sense is looking for I'm looking to present the positive presentation in the context of PhDs who are in this transition period well what is the contact of today's presentation I will talk about how to apply for employment how to open your mind and address this new transition with a more open mind preparing your skillset for different scenarios and preparing yourself for the business world and I'm looking to prepare how to seek a fixed position in a company or in academia also I'm going to talk about the postdoc work description so that you get more familiar what is a postdoc and what are the expectation of a postdoc and finally I will talk about the professional situation for postdocs well let's start first of all what is a postdoc and let's get more familiar about it postdoc is a transition period in your life between your PhD and your future job and you should take it as the step between kind of student life this is the end of your PhD and now we are going getting into the employment alive also you need to be ready for this step so therefore it's very important to address it early on don't be confined in your research job improve your soft skills and try to better understand the business world during your PhD development so it's very important to have this mindset while you are working on your PhD it's also important to heat to seek help from your university to plan better transition and in every university you'll fight career consultants or career centers where they can help you to prepare yourself for the work life so it's very important to benefit from those services and to get exposed to these ideas early on during your PhD well number one applying for a postdoc well normally to apply for a postdoc you should keep in mind that up I'm for employment opportunity is a typical and classical activity that he will do during your future career so from now on applying for postdoc or other employment chances you should take it into account once you are reaching the mid of your PhD be proactive to plan your future in order to do what you really want in your life and it's very important here to keep in mind that even if you are in doing a PhD it's not necessary to think that after a PhD you will stay in academia so don't hesitate it's not a failure to leave academia and if you are doing your PhD and you are in a transition period looking for a postdoc or looking for another job after the PhD you should be very aware aware about what is your plan of your life do you want to stay in academia do you want to continue to do research do you want to do something else so it's a very good opportunity in this sense to apply for a postdoc and use it as a transition period otherwise you can directly decide after your PhD well most promoters they will not encourage you to find a job outside of the university so don't be naive in many situations we find good promoters who are involved in helping the PhD students to go beyond their PhD activities and look to the next step but in most cases promoters are busy in their own research world and they are expecting that a PhD will continue with a postdoc so don't count on your promoter it is your responsibility to plan this step also it's not a betrayal to apply for a position outside University I met many postdocs and many PhDs who are considering applying in other places while doing their PhD as a as a betrayer or something which is totally unprofessional and it's totally not correct when you do a PhD you have to think about your own personal life when you do even a postdoc you can even start a postdoc and later on find another better opportunity you have always to think that at the end of the day it's about your own professional and personal career development and you have to plan it so please don't come others in this sense maybe you can consult your promoter you can ask for them but they will not plan that for you it's not their responsibility it is your responsibility so please think about that and you should not stick to the rule of being loyal means that I cannot apply in other places that's not true you can be in your end of your PhD years and you start to apply in other places the same if you are even starting a postdoc you can apply in parallel to look at opportunities also you must apply at least one year ahead so plan this step very importantly to do that because postdocs announcement they take time and they are involving recruitment process interviews sending documents approvals getting permissions if you are a foreigner you will go also through immigration so it's very important to think about planning ahead at least one year in advance it's not logic to finish your PhD and just until I add at the end of your PhD the last two or final months you start to think about your postdoc because if you apply at the end of your PhD imagine it's the 48 months you have to wait almost one year before you start your postdoc so actually you should plan your postdoc during your second or third year of PhD assuming that your PhD is a four-year PhD now the second thing I would like to talk about is opening your mind it's very important to open your mind and to think strategically for this transition step well determine your preferences it's very important as a PhD that you look at what do you want to do after you PhD for sure our PhD provides you with diverse experiences from conducting lab experiments to giving talks and supervising students but in the same time you should be more about aware about is this the thing you would like to do in the future would you like to continue in this career or would you like to do something else so develop a range of skills that can help you to maneuver and to move and to explore different terrains in case you are not feeling so well with the domain of research so develop a range of skill it well it is important for example for me to be aware about active develop transferable skills when I did my PhD I was aware about that and I wanted to look at how to work in a worked as a teamwork line management do-more project management writing written communication present in conferences so as a PhD you should keep these plans early on and try to expand your capacity especially when we talk about management skills when we talk about transversal skills or soft skills related to team work and this is important because most of the time PhD work is an individual process and if you miss the opportunity to get engaged or get develop your personal skills it might be risky later on to be prepared for the market also find out what's out there it's very important to look at what can the University offer you whatever university you are there will be a kind of Career Center so University Career Services is a good place to start career advisors are always available and they regularly and out encounter PhD students with doubts about their future roles and they can help you to structure and assess yourself regarding your preferences the you are a person who has would like to work in team would like to work individually would you like to work in industry in research in labs would you like to do more communication more marketing management and so on so try to broadly match your preferences and skill to specific roles so that when you are graduating you are able to sell yourself and to convince your recruiter that you have a divided diverse asset skill of soft and transversal skills that makes you from day one an active team member regardless of your specialization well how to develop your soft skills stop your technical skills because you are at the top I mean here that you have already your most probably your first three eliminated courses 60 credits first year of your PhD so technically you should be well but I'm talking here about non technical courses non technical courses courses related to business man and communication marketing soft skills team building even self assessments prioritize your soft skills you should be aware about yourself by the end of your PhD it's very important to know what kind of soft skills you are strong at and you have to identify those soft skills if you are not knowing what are your soft coughs soft skills that you are strong at at least try to look at these trainings and to become more familiar about the different sets of soft skills and identify for yourself the most friends of you PhD graduates often prefer to concentrate on research and sometimes lack the skills and experience for management roles and this is one of the big complaints that come from the industry especially when PhDs go seek jobs in the industry or in practice well you have to keep into account most probably when you end up your PhD is you are in your early 30s which means simply that you will be in a transition between being a junior and a senior at that age you are neither a sweet nerd neither a junior but most of the time you one of the expectations of any company or institution that will recruit recruit you they will have high expectation of management so you should expect that and you should prepare for that so my advice here is that management the more you grow up will be part of your daily activity so keep it in mind and prepare yourself for this transition in case you are willing to take this challenge another important thing is that graduate school offer a variety of workshops to prepare yourself for the job market so seize the opportunity directly check your University website for any career trainings and involved get involved early even during your first or second PhD years follow these courses these opportunities if there is any opportunity about startups business plans management communication skills team building skills and so on directly engage I advice you so that you are able later on to smoothly transfer from a career as a PhD student to a professional well if you look at how the what happens with PFDs this is a statistic of our faculty of Applied Sciences or the School of Engineering at leas University and as you can see there's a huge diverse diversity of what happens with PhDs 20% of the of them they go do postdocs so this is the purpose of this presentation I prepare those 20% but in the same time almost 80% they don't continue doing a postdoc but they do other things some of them they work independently they start their startups some of them they go work in public research sector some of them work in higher education others work in public research other work in private research so you will find different variation of recruitment pools where a PhD will go to so keep in mind that not every PhD will do a postdoc some a lot of PhDs after they finished a PhD they decide to directly work after however if you are seeking to continue working in academia most probably you will need to do a postdoc to be able to continue as an assistant professor or a tenure track later on but you have to open your mind that it's not everyone will do a postdoc well the industry is seeking always management experience and preferably experience of work in an international environment keep that in mind so when you prepare your CV and while you are going through your PhD research years keep in mind that at a certain moment maybe someone or some companies will benefit from your skill set that you are developing maybe management in for your PhD or working in an international environment is good for publications but it's also very important for your next recruiting company that will pick you so keep that in mind companies that are recruiting PhDs they are looking for management experience and they are looking for experience working in entire international environments it's also very important to keep in mind that not every PhD graduate is cut out for a commercial result-driven environment if you are a PhD and you decide later on to work in company or an industry or in practice you will find that the business in general the nature of business is to look at result driven performance where you are always looking to business development Marge's how to achieve goals how to increase the business opportunities so many PhDs they are not able to do that or they are not prepared for it but if you are seeking industry and you are looking to work in companies as a consultant or our as an expert after your PhD you should be prepared for that and you can train yourself for that so it's a matter of your interest if you are interested and you don't have the skillsets just be aware about it and start to prepare yourself take the training and look at trainings that can make you more integrated within industrial or a professional practical company context also moreover many are so smart so that they pick up those management skills in few years so keep in mind also it's a training process even if you are not well familiar or not experiences management many of postdocs or PhD mainly while they are taking new jobs they pick up very fast the management skills and they meet the expectation of the business world so it's not a big challenge it depends on your interest and yourself investment in yourself and in your skillset to be able to face the business world well the third aspect I would like to talk about is how to prepare for a fixed position why I'm saying here fixed position by fixed position I would like to say that you are going into a transition of more stability you will not continue life only on temporary contracts after doing a PhD you deserve to have like most other people a fixed position and it's important to prepare prepare for this transition so first of all have a reflection and where you want to live and work it's very important where you want to live where you want to work where you want to have a family or establish family or if you already have a family how you want to proceed with your family so it's very important to have a strategy that is beyond the work that goes into family future actually on the short-term meaning that the coming five years what do you want to do it's also important to look at where are my opportunities do I want to work in the public sector do I want to work in the private sector do I want to work as an independent those are the three options that you have so you have to be clearly identifying and distinguishes distinguishing those three domains and preparing yourself to be ready to apply in each of them because each of those domains has a different set of expectations public sector University means that you have to focus on publications working on exchange projects and so on and you are familiar that with that since you are doing a PhD working in the private sector it was just the previous slides that I was talking about how to prepare for the business world where there is expectation for management and for teamwork ability in an international environment and finally if you are working as an independent you have to be ready to establish your own company as a start-up work with a very little number of employees be having your business plan looking at the cash flow looking at funding and so on and so forth so it's very important to think here strategically where I'm going and what will be my next step and check always immigration conditions because if you are an immigrant it can be also an issue to check what kind of opportunity I can have or which kind of legal frameworks the countries allow for immigrants to work in so make sure to have a second plan and that's my advice I think the more you have second and third plan you the more you will avoid surprises or negative surprises it's not logic at all to put all your energy on one scenario or on one plan and assume that this will be the working plan I think that having several plans to contingency plan Plan B Plan C can help you to face the surprises that you will have while you are in this transition between a PhD and a postdoc or even between a postdoc and a fixed contract now if you start your postdoc and you are working on it keep in mind that the force should not exceed three years of work because it's by default a transition period so in this sense a postdoc is a three year period maximum you stay for three years and then you seek your fixed contract opportunity because anyway if you stay longer in the postdoc you make it difficult for yourself to get integrated in a university or in the private sector or is an either/or either that even work as an independent so it's very important to make several plans and start as early as possible to jump from your postdoc to your fixed contract or to your fixed position for sure you might be will have a difficulty to find a fixed position after the posting directly but at least you will have a transition of some monsters or a year and then you can get a fixed contract well what about family keep in mind also at that time of your career if you are a postdoc means most probably you are in your 30s meaning that if you have a family of or if you don't have a family it's the time to think about that what are your plans what are you going to do it's important to keep this into account so that you have a whole vision about your future that will go more into a stable the future as expected well organized talks this can help you these are some tips meaning that you can organize a series of talks of people you trust people who are actually having jobs and especially previous postdocs or previous PhDs who finished their postdoc and they got recruited in a place so this might be interesting you call them you send them an email you try to take an appointment and you exchange with them and you talk with them about to learn lessons and this can be beneficial also you can build up your own network there is another presentation that I gave it's called digital ID for researchers building up your LinkedIn profile is very important your research gait profile Google Scholar your Orkut profile all these advices are in the video entitled digital ID of researchers if you didn't watch it I advise you to look at it because by building a LinkedIn or social media profile it can help you to track a keep track of other connections easily access their work and easily contact them in case you need them and simply you can see how they are evolving how was their step from a place to a place what did they do after their postdoc and this might be inspiring you or at least validating assumptions on what you can do later on also it's important to arrange an internship I advise you strongly if you are looking to work in the business world in the industry or in private offices or in the private sector in general I advise you to arrange an internship even if you are going to work in a big organization even if it's a governmental or non-governmental it's very well worth it during your postdoc to arrange an internship an internship would make sense to work from three months to six months during your entire in your postdoc you can travel to such a company to check what you can learn there what you can provide them as a transition for your next step so use your supervisors network that's I advise that and do some cold email people and ask them for internship or work shadowing opportunities this is very important and take it serious even during recruitment exhibition exhibitions or career workshops you can simply seek that by building up your network and offering opportunities to work with the industry or with governmental organizations as a transition to your next step well point number four postdoc work description so what should I do as a postdoc what is the job description of a postdoc for sure a postdoc job description varies from a place to another you will most probably get a contract and in that contract you will find a series of tasks and job description that describes what you should do and what is expected from you but the ideal best practice for a postdoc is to do the following activities you have something around 20% of your activities are for research so 20% of your work should go for research and publications then you have 20% also of your time going for coaching so you have to propose master's thesis for example topics you can share that with your supervisor ask your supervisor to allow you to supervise or Co supervise master seizes propose ideas so this can be another 20 percent so 20 percent research 20 percent coaching then funding should take something around 15 percent of your time fundraising fundraising meaning that you identify the funding pools create a map for funding opportunity nationally regionally locally internationally on a continent level and start to seek different codes and start to prepare proposals and build up networks of teams to set up proposals whether they are research proposals or research industry proposal so this is something around 15% of your time which makes the rest of your work can be teaching teaching also it's the opportunity to do during the postdoc here I'm talking about 15% of your time can go for teaching meaning that simply if you teach for 15% you need to do that to prepare for the next step if you seek academia if you are looking to go apply as an assistant professor after your postdoc you must get the best out of your postdoc through teaching so this is a 15% of your time then the last thing that you have to do is reviewing papers reviewing papers and proposal can be something like 5 percent of the time maybe I'm mistaken with the percentages because I remember it is 5 percent for review papers and proposals 15 percent teaching this makes it 20 and then you have 10 percent for fun reading I'm sorry I'm correcting myself 30 percent for research and 30 percent for coaching so a postdoc by definition all the best practice is that you have 30 percent of your time as a postdoc is on research 30 percent is going for coaching then you have 10% 15% for fundraising 50 percent for teaching and finally 5% for reviewing papers so these are the main activities for sure I didn't want to put numbers because the activity balance varies from university to another but in general it's a 30 30 15 15 10 issue it varies from place to place the most important for you that you make sure that you cross all or guarantee to go through all those five major activities during your postdoc and have a reflection of those activity as deliverables or as as activities that correspond to those five axes so this is very important well conclusion I'm coming to the end simply plan your next step the postdoc is a transition period don't assume you will have a job just because you have a PhD a postdoc is difficult to have you must apply for it early on you have to have a network you have to have a project you have to seek somebody and this most of the cases for a postdoc these are calls that come some professor might offer you a postdoc in the same institution it's not recommended because the idea of your postdoc is to move to another establish establishment to prepare for your next step if you have a post of postdoc opportunity grab it you can go for it but you have to invest in yourself during your postdoc and build up your network at that and now as soon as possible while you're doing a poster because as I told you before it's the transition and this would be the last opportunity if you decide to leave academia so it's the last opportunity to go prepare yourself so plan ahead set up alternative scenarios very important very crucial and engage with the public as much as you can social media networks Expo fairs activities conferences these are my advices for postdocs to be ready for this transition and finally I can thank you for your attention I advise you to subscribe if you are interested you can also get the some content-related material if you check this web link I have other presentation related to postdocs maybe you can look at them if you did not see them and finally I would like to thank you for your attention and I am glad to present you this presentation based on several interviews I did with their four different postdocs and I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your attention

Channel: Shady Attia

Views: 20,168

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: post-doc, PhD, employment, carrier

Id: d_ts6uddrsY

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 11 2018